Theresa May runs scared over workers on company boards | Letters

The problem as you correctly identify in your editorial (22 November) is that the employee-director argument goes to the heart of what and whom a company is run for. Getting the right sort of answer to that is vital to knowing how best to reform corporate governance. As you remind us, Lord Bullock in his report in the 1970s concluded that viewing a company as the exclusive property of shareholders is out of touch with the company as a complex social and economic entity. Nearly half a century on and we are still unable to face the implications of this argument.

Britain is one of the only remaining large nations in Europe that has failed to recognise the importance of reforming corporate governance. But that needs more than a decision to appoint employee-directors. Little will change within the unitary or single board structures dominant in Anglo-American jurisdictions. The changes can only be realised within a structure of independent supervisory boards, supported by enforceable directors' duties.